


The Silent Language of Grief

by rosewiththorns



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Detroit Red Wings, Discipline, Gen, Grief, Hurt/Comfort, Kneeling, Kneeling Universe, Loss, M/M, Non-Sexual Submission, Spanking, mentoring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-24
Updated: 2015-11-24
Packaged: 2018-05-03 04:18:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5276312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosewiththorns/pseuds/rosewiththorns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the fifth anniversary of an event Danny wished never happened. Trigger warning for references to death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Silent Language of Grief

**Author's Note:**

> Please be aware that this story discusses death, even though no death occurs during the action itself, so make an informed decision about whether this piece is an appropriate one for you to read. 
> 
> This story is set during Danny's rookie year and is written basically per reader request, although I took the liberty of making it Danny's uncle, rather than father, who had passed away.

“Tears are the silent language of grief.”—Voltaire

The Silent Language of Grief

In the locker room as he changed back into his street clothes, Danny made a habit of evaluating how he had performed in practice, recording mental Post-It notes of his tiny triumphs and failures—scribbles to himself of what to do in the future and what not to repeat. Today, in a conservative estimate, there had probably been about ten times as many of the former as the latter, since he had to rummage through his memory to recall anything he had done well, while all his screw-ups were right at his fingertips. 

It hadn’t been a lack of effort, Danny thought, as he pulled on his jeans and zipped up the fly, even if it might have appeared that way from the outside. No, if anything, it had been too much concentration, because he was trying too damn hard to focus on hockey and forget that today was the anniversary of a death he wished he could heal from but feared would haunt him forever. Practice today had been akin to that dreadful exam you studied for until your eyes blurred but that you got so scatter-brained with pressure taking at your desk that you ended up flunking and ironically might have been better off not preparing and just improvising for. 

Boy, if grades were assigned to practice, had he ever flunked today. All of his passes were bouncy, as if he were playing with a basketball rather than a puck. He couldn’t corral the puck whenever a teammate shot it his way. His shots were aimed so wide and high that he might as well have been firing at the reflection of the net in the glass. His positioning had been so atrocious that he had been bawled out by Babs more times than Kindl and Smitty combined, which had never happened before. No wonder by the end of it he had been reduced to swearing like a sailor, using invective that would have made Mom wash his mouth out with soap and Dad slap him upside the head. 

Finished dressing, he wanted to do nothing more than get away from the teammates who had witnessed his terrible performance today, so he hurried across the locker room to the exit, relying on his scowl as a deterrent to anyone who might otherwise have attempted to engage him in discussion. He had almost completed his escape when Nik Kronwall grasped his elbow and asked quietly, “What’s up, Danny?” 

“The sky.” Danny’s lips pursed as he observed inwardly that even sarcasm wasn’t working for him, because that was a lame-ass cliche comment if ever there was one. 

“Aren’t you a comedian?” Nik was eyeing Danny too intently—as if he sensed that something more than a piss poor practice was crushing Danny like a mouse in a steel trap. “I meant what’s wrong?” 

He didn’t add the accusatory “with you,” but Danny didn’t want anybody’s concern or sympathy, because he might have a total breakdown if he confided what was eating away at him, so bristling as if Nik’s question had been unfathomably offensive, he snarled, “Nothing is wrong, damn it! Can’t you see I’m just having a bad day and leave me the hell alone?” 

For punctuation, before he even was cognizant of what he was doing—since rage was cathartic and it felt better to be mad than sad—he shoved Nik so forcefully that Nik was compelled to take a step backward to regain his balance. 

The locker room, which a second ago had been buzzing with banter, went silent as a grave— and Danny was an expert on graves because around this time five years ago, he had thrown a red rose and a shovelful of brown dirt over the mahogany coffin of Uncle Frank, and not even a whisper of wind had disturbed the soundlessness—the void—of the final resting place of a man who had always created noise and motion until he was suddenly stilled and hushed forever. 

Everybody stared at Danny, and he knew that he should have been mortified because probably no rookie in Red Wings history had assaulted and cursed out their mentor (nonetheless committed this crime in front of a roomful of witnesses), but somehow he felt as if he were lurking outside of himself, numb and unable to control himself or even summon the desire to do so. 

“We’re going, Danny.” Nik’s tone was as tight as the vice-grip he took of Danny’s elope as he steered Danny out of the locker room, where Danny could hear a babble of resuming conversations when the door slammed behind them, acting as a curtain close to the impromptu show. 

“I—“ Danny figured that he had to say something after attacking his mentor, but he wasn’t sure what exactly, so it was a blessing in disguise when Nik interrupted his weak explanation or apology (he hadn’t decide which it would be). 

“I don’t want to hear it right now.” Nik held up his hand to curtail Danny’s words. “We’ll discuss this at my house.” 

Not daring to speak again, Danny nodded mutely and trailed Nik down the corridor out of the arena to the parking lot, where he climbed into the passenger seat of Nik’s car. As Nik turned the key in the ignition and warmed up the engine, Danny remembered how it had been Uncle Frank who had done the heavy-lifting in teaching him how to drive, because both his parents had been too anxious to do it, even though Dad’s military training should have been sufficient to steel his nerves. 

Tears stung Danny’s eyes like acid, and he blinked them away furiously, hating how everyday things could abruptly remind him of Uncle Frank and paralyze him with grief. An iron cage was constricting his lungs, and he had to tell himself to breathe, but the breathing didn’t bring him any release. His exhalation misted the window pane, fogging the view of the ghostly figures of the trees with their bare arms outstretched as though begging for spring to resurrect them from this January death. 

It had been a different kind of fog that killed Uncle Frank. Uncle Frank had been working late at the office, and when he had finally gotten on the highway to return home to his wife and children, he had been plowed into head-on by drunk driver speeding in the opposite direction. The medical examiners had all said—as if it were a comfort to be dead sooner rather than letter—that Uncle Frank had perished instantly on impact, the airbag and seatbelt powerless to save him. They looked into the empty eyes of the bereaved family members and assured them that he would have been dead before he could begin to feel pain. The eternal numbness of death had spared him any agony from the accident…

As Nik turned the car into his driveway, Danny yanked himself out of his dark musings. He had to stop thinking about Uncle Frank’s death when it brought him nothing but misery. Glancing over at Nik as he hopped out of the vehicle, Danny judged by Nik’s creased forehead that he wouldn’t need a fortune teller to read his tea leaves in oder to inform him that his immediate future was also going to be filled with misery. Nik was most likely going to ensure that, although Danny deserved to be put through hell for being dumb enough to hit his mentor. 

What had he been thinking, anyway, assuming he was thinking anything at all? He couldn’t cease wondering that as he was guided up the stairs and down the hallway to Nik’s bedroom with a firm clasp on his shoulder. His parents had raised him to be respectful and hard-working, two attributes that usually steered him on autopilot even when he didn’t have the energy to actively want to live those virtues, and he realized that had made his transition to the Red Wings relatively smooth, since as long as you acted like you had your nose to the grindstone and didn’t rock the boat, Babs wouldn’t give you too difficult a time. Now he had let his temper get him into trouble, and the moment seemed to have come to pay the piper as Nik tossed a pillow on the floor by his bed and sat down on the mattress. 

Bracing himself for a long, purgatorial kneeling session and lecture, Danny started to fall to his knees before Nik but found himself upended on Nik’s lap before he could even process he was being tugged into that compromising position. 

Once he had recognized where he was, Danny swallowed to wet a suddenly dry throat. In his experience, only one thing—a spanking—happened when he was in this particular pose. Although he was well-aware that many rookies were spanked by their mentors when they knelt, that didn’t prevent his face from flaming with humiliation because he had never been spanked by Nik before. He had hoped that the fact Nik was a pretty even-keeled guy off the ice combined with Danny almost always trying to do the right thing would keep him from getting spanked, but he definitely deserved this one, and that was even more galling than the fact that it was about to occur at all…

His spine tensing, he waited for Nik to slide down his jeans and boxers as Dad would have done, but when he felt no breeze against his privates, Danny supposed that Nik, famed for his devastating open-ice hits, felt he could deliver strong enough swats through two layers of clothing. 

Closing his eyes as he anticipated on tenterhooks the opening smacks of what he predicted would be a long and hard spanking, Danny felt Nik’s palm pressing between his shoulder blades, probably preparing to lock him in place during the impending punishment. Danny had no intention of squirming, though, because not only had Dad taught him that resisting a spanking inevitably made it more severe, but also he knew that he had earned his stripes this time. 

“Kronner,” he burst out before he could bite his lip, “I shouldn’t have pushed or yelled at you. You have every right to be mad at me, but I’m sorry, I swear.” 

“I believe you because you’ve never acted like that before.” Nik rubbed Danny’s back with surprising gentleness given the circumstances. “I’m not angry at you, Danny, but I have to impress upon you how wrong what you did was—even if you only did it once. Now let’s get this over with.” 

Danny had no chance to steel himself before the first slap—more of a light tap—landed on his left ass cheek. Another mild swat—scarcely more than a pat—followed swiftly on his right butt cheek, and Danny was wondering when the spanks would begin to hurt when Nik started massaging figure-eights into his back, murmuring, “That’s over, kid, but if I ever have to do it again, it’ll be longer and harder.” 

“You won’t, Kronner,” promised Danny. 

“Let’s make sure of that.” Nik nudged Danny into a kneeling position on the pillow and began brushing the hair away from Danny’s temples. “Tell me what’s wrong.” 

“Who said anything’s wrong?” Danny ducked his head and gazed at the pillow, as though it contained the answers to all of life’s enigmas. 

“Don’t insult my intelligence by acting as if I’m dumb enough to believe nothing’s wrong when you act in a way you never have before.” Nik traced the shell of Danny’s earlobe with a ginger finger. “Now tell me what’s bothering you.” 

“I can’t,” mumbled Danny, giving a jerky shake of his head as if to dislodge a pesky fly. He was tempted to spill out his grief to Nik, but something—he wasn’t certain what—caused the words to choke in his mouth. Maybe it was the wrinkles around Nik’s eyes as he contemplated Danny, or perhaps it was the sight of his own hands curling around the silk pillow case so tightly that the knuckles became pearls that made him unable to speak of death when there were so many small signs of life around him. 

“Why not?” Nik cupped Danny’s chin between his palms and tilted upward until their eyes—Danny’s damp and Nik’s worried—met. “Like I told you, I’m not mad at you, Danny. I just want to help you deal with whatever it is.” 

“I can handle it myself.” Danny’s jaw clenched around the lie. “It’ll be better tomorrow.” 

“I want to make it better for you today.” Nik stroked Danny’s taut jaw until it went lax. “Go on. Tell me what the problem is.” 

“You wouldn’t understand, Kronner.” Danny could feel tears welling in his eyes again and wished they had waited until he was alone to make an appearance. 

“I won’t if you don’t give me an opportunity.” Nik patted Danny’s cheek. “Try me, Danny.” 

“All right.” Danny was too weary to fight any longer. The dam of his pent-up emotions exploding at last, he said in a stream, “Today is the fifth anniversary of my uncle Frank’s death. He was killed in a car crash, so I wasn’t prepared for him to pass away. I know that grief is supposed to get less with time—as if losing someone you care about is something you’re just meant to get over like losing a single sock and never a whole pair in the washing machine—but that’s not how it is for me. Every year the memory of losing him is more painful, because I don’t want to remember him dying but I don’t want to forget it either.” 

“My dad died when I was eleven, so I understand what you’re going through.” Nik squeezed Danny’s shoulder. “Most of the time, you probably don’t think about your uncle at all, but then something happens that reminds you of him or you think of something you would love to tell him but you can’t, and the loss cuts through your heart as deeply as it did the first time.” 

“Exactly.” Danny mopped at his eyes with the cuff of his sweatshirt. “You can’t get over it, and you’re not sure that you want to, because what kind of person would you be if you could just forget someone you loved when they died the way you would garbage tossed into a landfill?” 

“You shouldn’t forget your uncle, Danny.” Nik massaged the nape of Danny’s neck. “That would be a dishonor to him and you. You do have to go on living, though, because not living would be a disservice to him and you. No matter what, you have to continue living because that’s how you’ll keep alive the memory of your uncle, just the way I keep alive the memory of my dad by going on living. Now that your uncle is dead, you have to live for him and you, much like I have to live for my dad and me.”


End file.
